


Don't Say You Love Me

by kaeorin



Series: Stark Tower: Avengers Drabbles [8]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bedside Hand-Holding, Bedtime Stories, F/M, Love Confessions, Post-Mission, Reading, Stark Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 16:13:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17328275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: You're injured after a mission, and Loki comes to tell you something. You're not sure you want to hear it.





	Don't Say You Love Me

The infirmary in the compound was just this side of being a very small, very high-tech hospital. When you’d first woken up and realized that, you’d wanted to find a way to tease him for it. Sure, the agents and officers got wounded frequently, but why not just work something out with the actual hospital and have the jet drop them off there? Now that you were feeling more like yourself, however, all you could do was admire the brilliance of it. You wouldn’t have this privacy in an actual hospital. You wouldn’t have a doctor intimately familiar with the kinds of wounds that enemy combatants and alien adversaries could dish out in an actual hospital It was almost like Tony Stark was a goddamn mega-genius who knew what he was doing.

Your mission had gone south, as missions were wont to do. It was just supposed to be an information-retrieval mission, but someone had alerted the director, and a couple of heavily-armed guards had ended up dragging you into a basement to try to get information out of you. You’d held out long enough for backup to arrive and bail you out— _and_ you’d kept hold of your own pilfered info. All in all, it was a pretty goddamn successful mission, even if you were going to be stuck here for a while until your body healed.

It was hard to be sure what time it was. Outside the windows, the sky was as dark. Nighttime, then. You knew that if you really wanted to know more specifically, all you had to do was call out to FRIDAY, but you were still just exhausted enough not to bother. It was nighttime. There were fewer orderlies bustling about, and even the machines seemed quieter. You closed your eyes and drifted for a while. You’d been poked, prodded, stitched-up, questioned, reassured, and visited until you were just about sick of human interaction. Before long, you knew that this whole lie-very-still-and-very-quiet-while-your-body-heals-itself thing was going to get old, but right now you could appreciate it.

A soft sound from beside your bed made you open your eyes. Loki was sitting there, hands resting on either armrest, back straight but eyes slightly downcast. Maybe it was just your injuries talking, or just the way the light was playing across his features, but man… It wasn’t hard to picture him ruling a faraway kingdom. 

When he looked up at you, he didn’t seem surprised to note that you were already studying him. One corner of his lips curled into a just-barely-perceptible smile. Your heart thudded against your chest, but you were sure that _that_ didn’t have anything to do with your injuries.

“I thought you might be sleeping,” he said. 

“Sorry to disappoint.”

He attempted another smile, just barely larger than the first. He was so beautiful when he smiled. But it didn’t last long before it flickered away. Something was bothering him. You felt your own mouth curl into a sympathy-frown, but said nothing. If he spoke, it was always on his own terms. You knew that. So, you waited.

“I find that I often...forget. That you are mortal.” He sat as regal as ever, but you caught the way the fingers of his right hand twitched. He longed to pick at his fingers, he knew: a dead giveaway of his discomfort. You leaned your head back against your pillows. Give him space. Don’t rush him.

Your patience paid off.

“I saw them bring you in this morning. There was so much blood. I could scarcely tell that you were alive under all that.” His tone remained cool, impassive, but that was an important sign in and of itself. His posture, his voice. He was hiding behind this mask of power _because_ he was feeling powerless. Or concerned, at least. You weren’t a mindreader; you couldn’t tell the precise scale of his emotions, but something inside you warmed regardless. He opened his mouth but then let it shut right away. Loki of Asgard, speechless? You used the handrails of the bed to pull yourself into a sitting position. Your head was beginning to spin, but you weren’t sure what was causing it. Your movement drew wide eyes back to your face. “I thought for sure you were dead. Or would be...soon.”

“Don’t say you love me.” The words came out all at once, and before you’d quite made the decision to speak them.

It was the right thing to say, which, somehow, made it the wrong thing to say. You could tell by the little crease that formed between his eyebrows for a moment, before smoothing back out into impassivity. His eyes had gone cold, drained of every bit of the secret warmth which he normally reserved for you. He lifted his chin and made as if to rise from his seat. You reached out to him, desperate to make him understand.

“Don’t say it here, I mean.” He didn’t relax back into the seat, but...he didn’t continue to stand up. You swallowed, then lowered your voice. “I’ve been touched and talked at all day. I’ve got an IV in and all these wires attached to me. I’m in an unfamiliar bed in a fucking hospital. I know I’m gonna be fine but...Loki, everything hurts. If that’s really what you were going to say to me, I’m...I want to hear it, and I want to tell you that I love you, but...not here. Anywhere but here. Please.” Your head was starting to throb, but that was the least of your concerns right now.

“Very well.” He did finally relax backwards again, and folded his hands in his lap. He pressed his lips together in a very self-satisfied kind of way, but you couldn’t find it in yourself to be frustrated. You’d said it first. You never said it first. All your life, you’d made a point of never being the one to say it first, and here you’d gone and said it to one of the only people on earth who would have caught it in this situation. But you’d mollified him. You’d take the win. 

You lowered yourself back down to the mattress and tried not to show how much such a simple action had taken out of you. He didn’t say anything else, so you allowed yourself to lie there for a bit with your eyes closed, trying to breathe normally and make your head stop pounding.

“You were reading?” Though unexpected, his voice didn’t make you flinch. “There’s a book on the stand here.” You just barely heard the whisper of his clothing as he leaned over to retrieve it.

“I was trying, earlier.” It must have been the concussion: the words swam on the page and even when you did manage to force yourself to focus on them, it was hard to understand anything. You gestured vaguely to your head. “But, you know...head wounds...”

Still without opening your eyes, you heard him open the book and thumb through a few of the pages. “I could read to you, if you’d like. A bedtime story for my dear one?”

When you looked at him, the warmth was back in his eyes. Somehow, that one look did more for you than anything the doctors had offered today. When you nodded, he scooted the chair closer to your bed and reached for your hand. He pressed your knuckles to his lips as he situated the book on the bed beside you, but even when he began to read, he did not let go of you.

There was not much peace in a hospital—not even the high-tech, private kind of hospital that might be commissioned by someone like Tony Stark. But Loki’s voice, low and musical, drowned out the sounds around you. His hand, tender against your own in a way that was no longer surprising to you, was your tether to life as you drifted in and out of sleep.


End file.
